“I'm just one of those writers where I like to draw inspiration from my environment.”

– Monica James

“I just like the struggle.”

– Dr. Rebecca Sharp

“I love that fact that something that we create might make somebody else happy!”

– Jenny Kate Altman

“I have always been a writer. As for back as I can remember, I was writing on construction paper with crayons.”

– Emma Renshaw

“You know, it's like breaking that idea that melanin dictates what you're going to enjoy.”

– Nana Malone

“My mind has to be distracted for me to get over whatever is blocking me.”

– Nikki Sloane

“I am a lifelong Anglophile. I grew up reading Austin and discovered Georgette Heyer in college, which I didn't realize were romance novels at the time—but they totally were!”

– Martha Waters

“II just needed a piece of me, and a challenge—and it took off so quickly.”

– Willow Winters

“I feel really lucky that I get to (write) full-time now, and I’m so thankful, because I love it. I wake up excited every day.”

– Laura Pavlov

“When you write, you get attached to these characters, and you end up really wanting to dive further into them.”

– Kelsey Clayton

“I think [writing humor] is harder, because not everybody thinks the same thing is funny.”

– Alison G. Bailey

“I would have never guessed that picking up a book—an indie book—would change, and lead to all of this.”

– Charleigh Rose

“There's, like, a buzz when you release a book, and it's anxiousness, and nervousness, but excitement...I love releasing a new book.”

– CoraLee June

“Bits of my experiences now have been planted in my works before...Maybe it's not so strange. Maybe all of that is already in us, and our job as writers is just to unearth it and put it out there.”

– Emma Scott

“There's always a romantic element, but that's not the point of the story—it never is. It's always about the growth of the characters.”

– L.B. Simmons

“I’m a big rewriter. My books change a lot from draft one to draft two.”

– Catherine Cowles

“I guess readers read to escape, and I write to escape.”

– Susan Fanetti

“My goal was, when I published my first book, that I wanted forty-seven people to read it—47 people that I didn’t know—because I thought fifty was a stretch!”

– Natasha Madison

“One of the problems I have with my books is figuring out which shelf to put them on.”

– Suanne Laqueur

“It was a little bit of an uneven process in, kind of, building these three women in different ways. But I found it a great challenge—not one that I'm eager to replicate.”

—Megan Angelo